As is generally known, cellular phones, PHS phones, PDAs, game machines, notebook personal computers, and car navigation devices are provided with a large number of operating control buttons and wired or wireless input terminals. Users of these devices are supposed to operate the operating control buttons and input signals with the input terminals. In recent years, many folding type devices are released. These devices are constructed so that an LCD or other display section and an operating control section having operating control buttons and other controls are hinged together. The operating control buttons on a cellular phone or PHS phone, for instance, are used not only for dialing a phone number and entering characters, but also for setting up various telephone functions and computer functions.
The functions set up as described above include automatic lock, call cost display, use time display, ringtone setup, user information setup, and language setup functions. A wide variety of complicated functions can be set up for currently marketed cellular phones. This also holds true for the PDAs, game machines, notebook personal computers, and car navigation devices.
Further, the display sections on the PDAs and car navigation devices often use a touch panel. The above-mentioned functions can be exercised by operating not only hard operating control buttons but also on-screen soft operating control buttons. Unless otherwise stated, the term “operating control buttons” hereinafter refers to not only hard operating control buttons but also on-screen soft operating control buttons.